When the great Welsh winger Cliff Jones got home after Wales reached the 1958 football world cup quarter-final, so the story goes, some of his friends asked him where he had been, so low-key was the event and the team’s homecoming.

They were still hollering La Marseillaise in the crammed streets around the Stade Vélodrome, the boulevards awash with tricolours and the mood celebratory, as Didier Deschamps ushered his victors through the massed ranks of media and out into the night.

The varying reactions to Bastian Schweinsteiger’s handball during Germany’s 2-0 defeat by France on Thursday said a lot about how much the rule relating to the offence is still a cause of confusion for many.

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Lewis Hamilton has more personas than the Man of a Thousand Faces, as the old stage and film actor Lon Chaney was known. We have the rock star, the rapper, the playboy, the motorbike designer, the cosmetics salesman, the social media junkie, the fashionista and a collector of tattoos that Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man might envy.

Djokovic has gone, Federer has fallen and after a display of focused efficiency on Centre Court on Friday evening, Andy Murray will contest the Wimbledon final on Sunday as the favourite to reclaim the title he first won three years ago.

Martyn Rooney had to display grit in spades just to reach these European Championships – so when he felt the hot breath of the chasing pack he was always going to dig even deeper and be stubbornness personified.